The Mystifying Life Of Ernest Hemingway

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Most scholars call him the greatest American writer of the 20th century. Some even go as far as saying that he was the greatest American writer ever . What do we really know about him? We know that he was a philandering, macho drunk with a temper, whose new kind of direct prose set him apart from the pack. But what made him that way? What made him tick? Let's trace back the steps of Ernest Hemingway.

The story begins in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in a religious but artistic household. He grew up loving nature and outdoor activities, whereas school wasn't something he lived for (except for English classes, of course).

Upon his high school graduation in 1917, Hemingway had dreams of joining the fighting men of World War I. His father opposed his decision but that didn't stop the young man from trying to enroll. He applied to the Army on a number of occasions but was always rejected on account of a faulty eye.

He decided instead to go with his second choice and became a junior reporter for The Kansas City Star , a prominent newspaper of the era. His job was to cover the crime beat, reporting on what went on at the hospitals, police stations, and train stations. It was during that time that he learned how to write succinctly.

the adventure begins

Six months after having started at the newspaper, he saw an ad before it was printed. It urged young men to join the Red Cross and become ambulance drivers. The physical requirements weren't as strict as in the Armed Forces and he was accepted. He got a taste of war in Italy, evacuating the wounded from the battlefield.

On July 8, 1918, Austrian artillery hit the young man. The injuries were so severe that he had to be hospitalized in Milan. In spite of over 200 scars on his right leg, he desperately fell in love with one of his nurses, Agnes von Kurowsky. They had a brief romance but her career was her first priority. Hemingway proposed to her, but she turned him down claiming that the seven-year age difference was too much for her.

The 19-year-old was heartbroken. The war soon ended and he returned home to recuperate. He found modest work writing for Co-operative Commonwealth , a monthly magazine, and met another older (and wealthy) woman, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. They were married in September 1921. The Hemingways moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star .

As expatriates they befriended other American intellectuals living in the City of Lights. Among them were Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They encouraged Hemingway to publish his works of fiction. His first collection of short stories, In Our Time , came off the printing press in 1924 (and a year later in the U.S.).

a new life

This group of friends, which Gertrude Stein had famously nicknamed the "lost generation," became a source of inspiration for Hemingway and he wrote his first novel about it. The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926 and was extremely successful, both commercially and critically.

Later that same year, Hemingway left his wife and son for Pauline Pfeiffer, a reporter for magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair . His wife Hadley had one condition for granting him a divorce: Ernest and Pauline had to stay away from each other for six months to see if they would still be in love afterward. Hemingway granted her wish but it was a difficult time for him. He even considered suicide, as he had written in his letters to Pauline.